Wednesday, September 21, 2005

The Hate-America Right

I'm not a fan of anyone who hates America, and as Dean's World points out, the hate-America Right is just as harmful as the hate-America Left.

We talk a lot about the Hate-America Left. There's no doubt that they do exist--the Michael Moores, the Noam Chomskys, the Howard Zinns, and the other members of the fascist and communist apologist left. But one of the reasons I turned my back on conservatism was the dour Hate-America Right.

Who are they? The ones who say God no longer loves or protects America because we've fallen into wickedness and hedonism. The ones who suggest we got what was coming to us on 9/11 because God won't protect a country that considers allowing gay people get married. The ones who say we're a lazy, stupid, illiterate, slovenly bunch of uncouth pigs and vile hedonistic sinners.

Here's my question for the Hate-America Right: where was the point exactly that America was protected by God's grace? Was it before or after the British sacked Washington DC and burned the Capital and the White House? Was it before or after Gettysberg and Antietam? Before or after the bombing of the Maine? Before or after Pearl Harbor? Before or after the bombing of the Cole? Before or after 9/11?

[Here's] a news-flash for the dour "America sucks" conservatives: the divorce rate is down, not up. Illegitimacy is down, not up. The "free love" movement ended over 20 years ago. Single motherhood is viewed as either an unfortunate situation or is outright frowned on by most of society and is on the decline. And sexually transmitted diseases are less of a problem today than when our grandparents were young...

These observations are related to my prior post on Choice-based vs. Obligation-based families. To believe that excessive choice is the culprit in one's own family problems, one must believe in a general decline of the culture due to the same forces. But these ideas, as well as the false "Roman decline" historical analogy just don't hold up under data and closer scrutiny.

But then the class-war ideology of the left doesn't hold up either. That is why so many Americans self-identify as independents--they do not wish to be affiliated with the two parties using ideological mobilization of the bases as their main strategy, rather than reaching out to the the center. As long as moderate rhetoric is poison for a candidate in the primaries, politics will be more about a duel between each end of the hate-America spectrum than about centrist solutions.